This is another old one from days of Fictions Friday’s past. The featured image was the prompt for this tale.

 

It paid a girl like me to be unique. The whispering in dark corners didn’t bother me anymore, or even the calls of ‘freak’ that reached my ears. You see, in my line of work, men would pay good money to have their curiosity sated and then their desire. Fifty bucks just to look at the freak? Extra for a hands-on experience? I can’t complain.

Over slick pavements and potholes, the men travelled. I never knew how far they came, but they did come. They crowded in close to the other girls, glancing at their wares, but never intending to buy. They came for something “specific”, and they all asked for me by that name. A mumbled request in an alleyway to one of my co-workers and the resentful call for ‘Tattoo’ would drift to me through the district, carried on the steam vents and the muggy air. I’d hear my moniker minutes before the punters reached my door. Word travels quicker than a nervous John.

That’s how this one had come to me. A grudging series of whispers by my door. “A mouse for the freak,” “Tattoo…” and then, a timid knock. I lived uptown but kept a two-room space behind this rusted, red door. It was minimalist, to say the least, but it gave privacy and meant there was no need for awkward, backseat fumbling or dumpster humps. A faux leather chair sat across from an unmade bed and a small chest of drawers holding all the equipment a girl could need. To the side, another door leading to a tiny washroom.

The John sat there in my chair, fingers crushing the cracked and flaking armrests. He licked his chapped lips and shifted uncomfortably as his growing erection pressed against the material of his cheap suit. I stood and faced him, letting my robe fall to the ground with a dainty flutter. He came to fuck the freak and here I was, naked and demure.

I have a beautiful body; no man or woman could ever tell you different. A flat stomach and small waist accentuated my luscious curving hips that led down to legs so shapely they made other girls stare with envy and desire in their eyes. This John, like so many of the others, didn’t even bother to run his eyes over me, fixated they were on that one teasing hint. A flickering tongue of flame which snaked its way under my arm and curled itself around my left breast like the hand of a lover. Those black inked lines held him captive.

In a voice husky with need and fear, he commanded me to turn my back to him and ever the compliant whore I obeyed. Arms high over my head I held myself for his study, never quite sure as always if that gasp I heard from his lips came from horror desire. One thing for sure, there was always a hint of surprise. They heard the stories, and they came to gawk, but they didn’t believe until they saw with their own eyes.

Demons and devils leered from my flesh, writhing in flames that licked and scorched at my milk-pale skin. Black eyes, damning anyone who ever dared to stare. It didn’t matter. They all stared anyway. Swelled for me, wanted me. The freak that I am.

I heard him stand. The rustles of fabric as trousers were abandoned. His eyes bored into my spine. The serpent twisted about my arm luring him to temptation just as surely as it had Eve in the days of the Bible. Clammy hands cupping my breasts even as his mouth pressed wet and hungry against my skin. His disgusting little tongue traced the lines of the fire that marked me. Caressing my demons and tasting my devils as his erection swelled even harder against me. My mind drifted away from him to the first of his type.

It was the middle of a trick. He was just an average Joe. A little weird, but weren’t they all? The nervous, clammy type who had a wife and 2.4 kids stashed away somewhere, yet here he was trawling the gutters for a cheap piece of flesh. He came in a cheap suit with a briefcase. Out of town or just not ready to go home to his pretty little suburb?

He had me turned from him, mouth and hands caressing the creamy skin of my back. He was a talker. He told me I was perfect. He called me his white rose. I rolled my eyes because I knew he couldn’t see and whispered back all of the niceties his kind liked to hear. When his hands stopped their ceaseless caressing, I almost sighed with relief, enough talk and let’s get this thing done.

The sound of hands fumbling in pockets. I turned to offer him some help with the condom, but his hand on my shoulder kept me from facing him, and he asked me not to look. Oh great, he was shy. Just what I needed, we might be here all night.

His arm was snaking around my waist, thank God. Finally, he’s ready. His breath felt hot as he pressed his mouth to my ear.

‘I’ll make you beautiful.’ He whispered

The sharp pain as the needle pricked my neck. I tried to struggle. Blackness seeped in at the edge of my vision. Oh God, I couldn’t go out like this. You hear stories of men who murder whores, but not me. Not like this. I tried to hang on but I was falling, and there was nothing to stop me. The distant feeling of landing, face-down, on the bed and the sound of buckles on his briefcase unfastening. I melted away.

I woke hours later in the same bed, A brief moment of relief until I tried to move my arms and legs. I wasn’t bound but pain flooded through me, a thousand knives stabbing at my body. I crawled to the edge of the bed before vomiting on the carpet. It didn’t help at all. 

Eyes finally raising, I caught my reflection in the full-length mirror. Face pale, my hair limp and knotted, blood and ink still oozing from my shoulders. I slid from the bed and crawled to the mirror. It was agony, but I had to see. I saw the bed, stained red with my blood and black with ink. Oh God, Oh God. I twisted to look, and the demons stared back at me.

Creamy white skin now a living tribute to a madman. I was his walking canvas.

Pulling back to the here and now I slid the gun from between the rumpled sheets and turned on the John. This time, he exhaled in horror, not desire. That big, black, eye of destiny stared him down, the barrel never blinking. Erection pathetically flaccid, he emptied his bladder down his leg.

Two hands on the gun, ‘Any last words?’

‘Please…’ he muttered. Funny, I have heard that so many times.

I shot him in the head. I shot him like I shot all the ones like him. The men who reminded me of Him.